Is
this for real? Confessions
of a Dangerous Mind presents the rumored double life of infamous television
producer and "Gong Show" host Chuck Barris. The movie is based on Barris’ own novel of the same name (with the
clever subtitle An Unauthorized
Autobiography), in which he dances with the idea that his chaperoning duties
for his "The Dating Game" were merely covers for him to assassinate
threats to the US overseas. No one knows if it’s
fact or fiction (except Barris himself), but whatever the reality may be, both
possibilities have sensible circumstantial evidence and intriguing repercussions.
If it’s true and
Barris was a CIA hitman, then he has put himself on the line and certainly has
lived a conflicted life. Conveniently,
though, there’s no one around who can confirm or deny Barris’ role in the
CIA by the end of his story, and he has made a career making fools out of people
and institutions (as he admits throughout the movie). So the real question then is—if it is all a lie—what kind of person
would make up a story like this? Based
on what we learn from Confessions of a
Dangerous Mind, Barris certainly makes a good candidate.

The
movie begins in 1981 as Barris (Sam Rockwell) sits around a hotel room naked,
watches television, and ponders over his life. He has no time for anything or anyone else, even a concerned friend named
Penny (Drew Barrymore), who comes to visit him in his time of need. Barris recalls his first experience with a girl at a young age, when he
convinced her that a certain part of his body tasted like strawberries. His experiences with women from then on out were never successful; we see
a movie theater of kids making out as Chuck’s date pushes him away. Then he finds a job as a page at NBC, discovers that you need only seem
successful to court some women, and begins to develop some ideas for TV shows. Eventually, Chuck gets a job on "American Bandstand" and
finalizes an idea for a game show called "The Dating Game." At first, it’s rejected, although later, the heads at ABC will change
their minds. It’s during this time
that Barris proposes he was first approached by Jim Byrd (George Clooney), who
tells Chuck that he fits a profile and offers him training to become a CIA
operative.

The
movie is the directorial debut of George Clooney, who shows some solid promise
in the role, although he seems to have pulled out all the stops for his first
time out. He seems to be trying to
distinguish the movie’s look and composition to get attention. The cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel is decidedly bleached-out, and
Clooney implements some innovative staging and disorientating camera angles and mise
en scène. In one scene, Chuck
has a conversation over the phone with a television executive, and as Chuck
moves through his apartment, the wall disappears to reveal the man at the other
end of the line out of focus in the background. There’s another scene in which we follow Chuck’s day in and out as an
NBC page in one take, with actors moving in and out of the frame to establish
time passage. In one moment, "The
Gong Show" is revealed to Chuck as he listens to a bad audition. The distinctiveness fits Barris’ personality and Clooney has a
particularly strong control over the visual elements of his film, but I wonder
if it’s too much for its own sake.

Even
with complete control over the story, Clooney would have to deal with an uneven
script. Surprisingly enough, the
screenplay was written by Charlie Kaufman, whose past work on Being John Malkovich and Adaptation
could be called brilliantly uneven, but here it’s just plain old uneven. For all its character-driven touches, the majority of the movie plays out
too much like a typical biopic with episodic scenes highlighting the major
events of the subject’s life and occasionally touching upon glimpses into the
man’s psyche. The movie does
really get across how Barris’ ideas come from his cynical view of society and
humanity (mostly because he flat-out says it). For Barris, "The Newlywed Game" was an excuse to uncover how
people would “sell out” for the chance to win a refrigerator, and "The
Gong Show" played to the concept that people would make asses of themselves
just to appear on television (how true that is nowadays). The scenes of Chuck on assignment are perhaps the movie’s best, which
is odd considering that those are the ones that probably never happened. As his personal life and professional double life spiral downward, the
movie begins to focus on Barris’ inner-conflict. It’s a nice change of pace although unfortunately not as effective as
it could have been had we learned more about him beforehand.

For
all its urban legend intrigue and all the fun the actors are obviously having, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is too succinct and too
straightforward for its enigmatic subject. I
keep going back to my initial question, though, and I think I’m pretty
convinced about the answer. At one
point, a fellow spy played by Julia Roberts makes a perceptive point: "Insane
asylums are filled with people who think they’re Jesus or Satan. Very few have delusions of being a guy down the block who works for an
insurance company." Or of being
a television producer, for that matter.